For my own part, I am apt to join in the opinion with those who
believe that all the regions of Nature swarm with spirits, and
that we have multitudes of spectators on all our actions when we
think ourselves most alone.
- Joseph Addison

Whether dark presages of the night proceed from any latent power
of the soul during her abstraction, or from any operation of
subordinate spirits, has been a dispute.
- Joseph Addison

Why, a spirit is such a little, little thing, that I have heard
man, who was a great scholar, say that he'll dance ye a hornpipe
upon the point of a needle.
- Joseph Addison, The Drummer (act I, sc. 1)

Some who are far from atheists, may make themselves merry with
that conceit of thousands of spirits dancing at once upon a
needle's point.
- Ralph Cudworth, True Intellectual System of the Universe
(vol. III, p. 497), (ed, 1829)

A Corpse or a Ghost-- . . . I'd sooner be one or t'other, square
and fair, than a Ghost in a Corpse, which is my feelins at
present.
- William de Morgan, Joseph Vance
(ch. XXXIX)

There's a spirit above, and a spirit below,
A spirit of joy, and a spirit of woe,
The spirit above is the spirit divine,
The spirit below is the spirit of wine.[Unattributed--[written
about 1825]} Wicked spirits may by their cunning carry further in
a seeming confederacy or subserviency to the designs of a good
angel.
- John Dryden, written about 1825

I am the spirit of the morning sea,
I am the awakening and the glad surprise.
- Richard Watson Gilder, Ode

Aerial spirits, by great Jove design'd
To be on earth the guardians of mankind:
Invisible to mortal eyes they go,
And mark our actions, good or bad, below:
The immortal spies with watchful care preside,
And thrice ten thousand round their charges glide:
They can reward with glory or with gold,
A power they by Divine permission hold.
- Hesiod, Works and Days (l. 164)

He had been indulging in fanciful speculations on spiritual
essences until he had an ideal world of his own around him.
- Washington Irving

Without the notion and allowance of spirits, our philosophy will
be lame and defective in one main part of it.
- John Locke (1)

Spirits live insphered, in regions mild, of calm and serene air.
- John Milton

The spirits perverse with easy intercourse pass to and fro, to
tempt or punish mortals.
- John Milton

Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth
Unseen, both when we wake, and when we sleep.
- John Milton, Paradise Lost
(bk. IV, l. 678)